Two's Company, Three's a Crowd
by Delgodess
Summary: When Patti gets severely injured on a mission gone wrong, Liz has a startling epiphany. Death the Kid is no good for them. And until he gets his act together, he can say good-bye to the sisters- and his twin pistols. Eventual Kid/Liz
1. Shatter Me

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT own Soul Eater.**

**EDIT 4/13/2015: Fixed minor errors, reformatted text, and resolved inconsistencies with Death the Kid's character.**

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><p><strong>One: <strong>_Shatter Me_

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><p>Liz was shaking. The hospital room was dry, the wallpaper bright with happy colors. Balloons, cards and flowers littered the night table near the bed. But even with the flowers, the air smelt clean, too clean, like bleach used to wipe away blood. Or maybe it was the disinfectant? Still, she could taste death on the back of her tongue.<p>

It didn't help that she could hear the beep of her sister's life coming from the monitor, or see the machine pushing air through plastic tubes into her sister's lungs. She stood in the doorway, ignoring the hospital's morning rush behind her, clutching a large paper bag filled with her belongings and staring vacantly into the room.

She herself had just been released, on strict orders by the doctors to get home and rest. But she had to see her sister, so she moved forward, blindly reaching out for the arm of a nearby chair. She dragged it slowly towards the bed, the wooden legs screeching against the linoleum until she got it into position.

Liz sat down stiffly, the bandages around her chest and middle tight enough to make her breath catch. She gazed down at her little sister, hands flexing around the bag on her lap. It crinkled and she took a moment to place it by her seat so she wouldn't end up ripping holes in it. The seat was uncomfortable, its hard wooden surface unforgiving, and she shifted, already feeling her wounds begin to throb. She _really _should be lying down, but she ignored the thought, reaching for the still hand resting by the equally still body.

"Oh, Patti." Liz breathed, a sound similar to a sob escaping her mouth.

Time hardly existed for the traumatized blond, the only spark of light in her darkening world: the bleep of her sister's heart beat. Nurses came and went, asking with concerned and motherly tones if she was alright, if she needed anything and did she know visiting hours where almost up? She'd wave them all away, glaring at the more persistent ones, until eventually, they left her alone.

Then she felt it.

The tell-tale sign of rotating energy, circling in a manner only meant to make something levitate. It was a feeling she was intimately familiar with, one that should have brought her relief. However, the only feeling she could scrape up was impatience. And the more it lingered in the hallway, the more irate she grew.

"Unacceptable! This frame is off center! And that one there! You have some gall, calling yourselves professionals!"

Liz's first movement in hours was to cringe away from Death the Kid's voice, muscles stiffening painfully.

Had he always sounded so strange? So… unbalanced?

She couldn't remember and it was a struggle to sit still and listen to his inane ramblings. She fingered her blue button-down shirt instead, tracing the loose knot she'd made when she'd tied the ends together. It didn't cover up her bandaged torso, but it was enough to hide her chest and was far less irritating against her sensitive skin than if she had worn it properly.

The door burst open and Liz started at the noise, gasping when her ribs twinged. Catching her breath, the young woman rose, spinning on heel to face the boy she knew was standing in the door way.

They stared at each other, speechless, but for different reasons. Liz felt her eyes begin to warm with the first traces of liquid, annoyance forgotten and relief filling her because _he was finally here_. She gasped in a shuttering breath, watching the way his eyes traveled down her form and widened at her bandages, the fabric spotted with blood. Her pale lips opened to speak-

"What is this?" He demanded, cutting her off. He was suddenly too close, his fast movement making her dizzy.

"What do you-" Liz started, blond brows scrunched in confusion. Kid's long fingers were suddenly tugging at her shirt, pulling it open as he gestured underneath. She brought her own fingers up automatically, holding up the material.

"These lines! These _asymmetrical_ lines! We'll have to do them all over again. They must be _perfect_!"

She couldn't believe what she was hearing.

Her hands clung limply to the edges of her open blouse, his despairing remarks about her uneven bandages rolling over her in waves.

She could feel the warm liquid of her blood seeping through them and was sure that it was visible even to his eyes now; and yet, he still went on and _on _about their obvious lack of symmetry. Even as her open wounds left their mark on the clean linins, even as her sister lay in the bed beside them, motionless.

Liz could feel herself falling into the abyss of her consciousness, the dreaded word echoing in her head, ping ponging off the confines of her mind. Distantly, she could hear him repeating it, over and over, and every time it seemed to pound harder against the wall of her emotions.

Liz felt something within her give, crack and then shatter; something hot and ugly reared its head in its stead.

Something not unlike hate.

It charged through her body, raging in her soul until it left her empty and cold, giving her a calculated clarity that she had only experienced once in her life.

Liz slowly lifted her hand, the burning red emotion needing an outlet, and brought it down with all the force she could muster.

She slapped him.

Hard.

Kid's head whipped to the side, his whole body thrown off balance from the blow as he lurched, barely managing to catch himself before he went careening into the wall. The atmosphere in the room suddenly changed, becoming tense, the air silent and still.

His own hand had lifted at some point to cover his face, hiding it from view. She could barely hear his breathing in the silence and inwardly reveled in the quiet; darkly pleased that she had finally, _finally_, shut him up.

Liz let her arm fall, resisting the urge to clutch it to her chest.

Her hand smarted; she must have broken it.

He rose and turned to face her, pulling his hand away to reveal a bloody nose, split lip, and a purple bruise that was already forming on the sensitive white skin of his left cheek.

Liz waited until his indignant yellow eyes met hers, until his mouth opened to speak, before she harshly cut him off, stabbing him with words as sharp as splintered glass.

"You _disgust_ me."

His eyes widened momentarily and a tremor visibly went down the length of his body. Liz's blue gaze was hard as she regarded him.

"You don't even _see_ us do you?" Her vision was blurring, angry tears threatening to fall, but she held them back, gritting her teeth stubbornly.

She ripped her shirt the rest of the way off, exposing her near nakedness to him in an action that showed she couldn't care less.

"Patti is in a coma," Gesturing to the still figure on the hospital bed and then to herself, "And I am so _fucking_ messed up I can't move without pain." She let the fabric drop to her sides, wincing as she shifted her weight.

"And all you can think about…" Liz took a deep breath, ribs aching, and then let it out slowly.

"All _you_ can think about is whether the pictures in the hallway are hanging straight."

Kid seemed to have gotten a hold of himself, his form back to its perfect posture, eyes closed off as he looked coolly down his nose at her.

"They weren't. You know very well that the issue needed to be addressed and that I was the only one capable enough to fix it. That's why it took me so long to get here-"

"Stop, Kid. Just stop." Her voice was dead, even to her ears. Liz sat back down on the uncomfortable hospital chair, turning away from him tiredly and taking Patti's hand in her own unbroken one. She stared, refusing to glance behind her.

"I don't care about your stupid symmetry. You're a hypocrite and a liar; all your words about balance and perfection mean _nothing_ when you can't even live up to your own standards."

She heard a sharp inhale of breath, but ignored it, carefully laying her hurt hand on her lap and releasing the other to lovingly tuck a short blond lock of hair away from her sleeping sister's face.

"My baby sister is in a coma because of you." She whispered.

Then louder, "She almost _died_."

Liz pulled away bitterly, angling her head to look Kid directly in the eye.

"You left us." Her glare intensified to an enraged smolder, lashing out at him the only way she knew how.

"We _needed_ you and _you weren't there_!"

The statement echoed in the space between them, the not so distant sound of people moving in the hallway going unnoticed by the rooms' occupants. Kid swallowed, pale hand lifting to fumble with his tie, eyes fixed on a point somewhere over Liz's right shoulder. He didn't look at Patti. In fact, Liz noticed with a sneer, he hadn't even glanced at her sister since he'd entered the room.

Kid's face twisted into a frown, wrinkles forming between is brows. "You know it wasn't like that…" He started slowly, patronizingly, like _she_ was the one being illogical, like he could _convince_ her that this was some sort of big _misunderstanding_. But Liz wouldn't fall for it. Never again.

"Get out."

He paused, dumfounded. "Excuse me?"

"You are _never_ coming near me or my sister ever again. Find yourself some new Weapons, Kid. We're through."

"But… Liz, what-"

She turned from him then, bending over the hospital bed to fix her sister's blanket, studiously ignoring her former meister's existence. Silence reigned for an infinite amount of time while she sat there, rigid, and stared into Patti's face. It was only after she heard his retreating footsteps, after the door clicked shut with finality, that Liz finally bent her head and let the tears slide down her face.

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><p><strong>AN: The idea was that Kid's '<strong>_**problem'**_** finally got the best of him and the girls got hurt because of it. And like any caring, protective older sister, Elizabeth decides that enough is enough. What do you think so far?**

**~Delgodess**


	2. Haunting Me

**Two:** _Haunting Me_

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><p>She went back to the old haunts.<p>

To the lamplit dance of painted smiles in grimy alleys blackened with smog, where handshakes in the dark spelled ruin; where poison and pleasure and violence all meant the same thing.

To the dark places where Hopes and Dreams were exchanged for Madness; the Madness of a Mad Dog, foaming at the mouth as it chokes on its own blood.

She went home.

To the city were she'd been born, where she'd fought and bled and killed with the abandonment of the forsaken.

She bought herself a gun and the irony of it brought a bitter smile to her lips. _How long had it been since she was both weapon and miester? _But it was well-made and felt cold and smooth and _wrongwrongwrong_ different from Patti in her hand, so she would never mistake it for anything but the lifeless tool it was.

She went back home and found their old apartment building burned to the ground, a dry husk of what it used to be. The place had held memories, yes, and nightmares too, but more than anything it had been a place to sleep.

So she found a modest apartment on the cleaner side of town, too big for one but perfect for two.

And then Liz reconnected with old acquaintances.

She found them in the dark where she'd left them, the liars and back-stabbers, whores and dead men: her _friends_. The ones who'd sold them out, killed them, if not for Death Himself. _Even if he was only a pale imitation, a _child_ in comparison_. And through them she put out feelers and the information trickled in.

Who was who, what was what. The men and murderers, monsters both, who'd risen from the ashes of that day; the day Death came to town and took two sisters away. Familiar faces, old faces, and some new, but behind it all was the vicious truth; whispered in the night like a prayer:

Power, Wealth, Prestige.

_Kill, or be killed. Eat, or be eaten_.

And she found _fear_. "The Thompson Sisters" had made an impression that fateful night and rumor had done the rest. Liz was a myth in her own city. And myths aren't supposed to live and breathe and walk the streets in the flesh.

So they came for her. After, when she cleaned their blood from her shoes and the smell of vomit and piss from her clothes, Liz marveled.

It had been so..._easy_.

_He_ had seen to that.

The sisters time with Kid had tamed them. Molded them into more than just rabid dogs, all bite and meanness. All the missions, the lessons meant for self-control, the agony of learning to work with more than just themselves. _Learning to trust_. She'd willingly put the glasses on her brow and had seen the world through a lens of the deepest rose.

But the viciousness of a Mad Dog never truly leaves. He'd simply cultivated it, reigned in the wildness of their souls; made them faster, stronger. _Better_.

It wasn't a good thing; the Madness. But it wasn't bad either.

Her "little show" got her a job with an old enemy. The Mob. She was a hit man in the guise of a girl, an unassuming face. Her targets never saw her as a threat and the men who supplied her paychecks praised her for it.

Never mind that without Patti she was only working at half power, half capacity, _half of her potential_.

She didn't particularly like killing, but she was a weapon trained by Death. _How could she _not_ be good at it?_

And the pay.

_Oh_, the pay.

Death paid her bills; for her apartment and food and bullets.

It paid to keep the authorities away, the Meisters unknowing and off her trail.

It paid for the room in which Patti slept, the air that pushed into her lungs and kept her alive. It paid when the stipend the DWMA had given them as students ran out, when the little money they'd put away from missions wasn't enough.

Death _paid_.

And sometimes, after a really bad day of a heist or game or _murder_ gone wrong, Liz thought she felt familiar gold eyes watching from the shadows of her dark apartment, _judging_.

'_You did this_.' She'd whisper, '_You made me do this_.'

And then she'd flip the lights on to greet her empty home and wash the death from her body. _But not from her soul, never from her soul_.

Days, weeks, months, pass in a blur of red and black, Blood and Death. _Liz wonders why Kid haunts her thoughts, why he's here _now_, when she doesn't want him_.

Then, eight months after the disaster that ruined everything, Patti woke up.

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><p><strong>AN: Heh, a cliff hanger. Had inspiration and wrote this on my phone.<strong>

**Review?**

**~Delgodess**


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